


(A Funny Thing Happened) On the Way to Kaer Morhen

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Series: Gameplay Vignettes [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Choking, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21652324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: Geralt and Uma, during that time-skip that got them to Kaer Morhen. And after.
Series: Gameplay Vignettes [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1408447
Comments: 29
Kudos: 274
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 10





	(A Funny Thing Happened) On the Way to Kaer Morhen

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "asphyxiation" square on my Hurt/Comfort Bingo card. (It's the "choking on food" kind of choking, not the other kind.)

By the time they reached the Pontar, Geralt had stopped noticing that Uma was particularly ugly. That was just the shape Uma was; mostly Geralt didn't look at him at all, and only experienced him as a small weight sharing the saddle, sleeping against him or fidgeting and mumbling. Geralt soothed him absently from time to time, his hand running gently over the bumps and ridges of his curved back. Geralt offered tidbits from his belt pouch when he snacked himself, which quickly led to Uma helping himself.

He wasn't a remotely sneaky thief, and when Geralt cleared his throat and looked down at him, Uma froze, hand clamped over his mouth with a few fragments of dried fruit stuck between his fingers. He looked up at Geralt with his good eye very wide and rolling a little, like he wasn't sure where to look.

"Well I don't want it back now that it's been in your mouth," Geralt said dryly, keeping his voice even and unthreatening, his expression calm. He didn't think Uma understood quite everything he said, but he understood enough--and right now he looked like he was bracing for Geralt to hurt him.

Uma gabbled a little noise, muffled with fruit, and then chewed, swallowed, and licked his fingers clean while muttering to himself, slowly relaxing against Geralt. 

Geralt ran a hand lightly over Uma's head and then reached back to his saddlebag for more snacks.

They made their first camp not far from the river. They could have made the journey from town to town, but Geralt didn't particularly want to have people staring at the double freakshow of himself and Uma together, night after night. Plus, if he didn't see any noticeboards he wouldn't know what contracts he was passing up, what trouble people were in that he wasn't fixing for them. Dull as it seemed, this errand was more important, but still. It was easier not to know.

Uma seemed perfectly content roughing it; he caught himself a rabbit while Geralt was getting Roach brushed down and checking her feet. Geralt looked over when he heard the squelchy crunching sounds of Uma eating, and Uma froze like he had when Geralt caught him with the dried fruit.

Then he lolloped over to Geralt, the half-skinned rabbit held in his mouth, and offered the carcass to Geralt. 

Geralt took it, flicking a little Axii in Roach's direction so she wouldn't get twitchy, and cracked the ribcage further open, looking to see what Uma had already taken a bite of. Liver, mostly, but there was a piece left. Geralt pulled that out and popped into his mouth, then handed the rest back, chewing and swallowing before he said, "Thanks."

Uma gabbled at him a little, nodding and bouncing, but then took his dinner back and sat down a pace away to eat it. Geralt cleaned his hands and went back to tending Roach, and then found his own meal of trail rations, which tasted a little odd with the rich bloody taste of raw liver still lingering in his mouth. It wasn't bad, though, and while making camp and bedding down for a night's rest with Uma wasn't like passing a night with Vesemir or another witcher, it wasn't like being entirely on his own, either. 

He wasn't particularly surprised to wake, a little before dawn, with Uma curled into his side, snuffling in his sleep. Geralt curled his arm around the little body, not unlike he did in the saddle, and stared up at the fading stars as he mentally plotted their day's route and where they would camp tonight.

The days fell into a rhythm as they traveled east up the Pontar. They weren't slowed much by stops for Geralt to kill whatever threatened them on the road, and after the first time or two Uma stayed with Roach instead of disappearing into the underbrush to hide. Uma continued to provide his own meat by hunting where they camped, and shared Geralt's trail rations during the day. It was simple. 

And then came the night when Geralt knelt down by the fire to meditate. A drowner had gotten a lucky shot at him a few hours earlier, and though he'd taken Swallow to close the wounds, he knew a spell of meditation would soothe the ache and replenish the lost blood. 

He was jerked out of his trance less than an hour later, by a sound like an animal thrashing in a snare, and Roach snorting and dancing unhappily. He bolted to the spot and found Uma, one hand still clutching a half-eaten squirrel, the other hand clawing at his open mouth and protruding tongue. His lips were going purple-blue, and even his bad eye seemed to be bulging out.

Choking, obviously. Geralt grabbed Uma up and put Uma's back to his chest, but the quick jerk up against his midsection did nothing. Geralt had to stop, feeling over the misshapen body, to work out the relative positions of bones and muscles and lungs, where he could strike to produce the needed force of air. All the while Uma was struggling, and his struggles were already getting weaker when Geralt finally jammed the heel of his hand into an unlikely spot on Uma's belly and the little man convulsed around the blow, coughing and then gasping, then, when he had the breath, wailing.

Uma scrabbled at him, and clung to Geralt with hysterical strength when he finally got a grip. Geralt, his own heart racing, returned the embrace as he settled down to sit on the ground with Uma cuddled only a little awkwardly into his lap. Running a hand up and down the bare knobbly back, the comparison Geralt had been successfully avoiding thinking about finally bubbled up.

How many times had he held Ciri like this, comforting her after nightmares or other upsets? Twelve-year-old Ciri had been so small, and when she was in need of his comfort she curled herself up even smaller, hardly bigger than Uma. Geralt had always given her the reassurances she seemed to need, finding himself torn between baffled frustration at an emotional display he couldn't have imagined making when he was half her age and gladness that she behaved so much more like he suspected normal children were supposed to.

Uma wasn't a normal anything, but he was connected to Ciri somehow. There was even the dim possibility that he _was_ Ciri, under the influence of some powerful disguising spell, though Geralt doubted it. He didn't think it would be so simple, and he didn't think that this guise would be the one anyone would use to cut her off from assistance. 

Mostly, though... Geralt couldn't believe that he wouldn't have known Ciri in any guise, or that she could be so altered as to not recognize him. The ties that bound them were stronger than that. He was almost certain that they were stronger than that.

Still. Uma was the key to finding Ciri, and Geralt had nearly lost that tonight, in nearly losing him. And it would have been nearly as gutting to have lost Uma for his own sake, to have been so careless with his little charge who trusted him so readily. 

Geralt thought distantly that maybe this long search for Ciri had left him a little emotional himself, if he was feeling this shaken over such a simply-averted accident. He sat there in the dirt holding Uma until the little man calmed and went limp against him, and then Geralt stood up, still holding him, and went to extract some wrapped squares of honeycomb and a loaf of bread from his pack, along with a waterskin. 

He gave Uma the water first, and Uma sipped carefully, making no move to vacate Geralt's lap. Geralt worked around him, tearing off a bit of bread and mashing a chunk of honeycomb into it. "Here. Chew slowly, all right?"

Uma made a low mumble in an affirmative tone, and chewed slower, if no more neatly, than Geralt had ever seen. Geralt ate his own share of the bread and honeycomb, feeling his body slowly settle from that sick rush of adrenaline, and when it was all gone, he took Uma over to the river's edge and got them both clean of honey-stickiness. Uma recoiled from the water, clutching at Geralt's shirt, but he let Geralt use his hands and a bit of sand to get him clean without any other protest.

Obviously neither of them was even going to make the pretense of Uma sleeping somewhere other than snuggled up to Geralt tonight; Geralt lay Uma's blanket with his own bedroll and settled down with Uma tucked under his arm. He half-expected Uma to fall asleep at once, on the downslope of the adrenaline rush and with some food in his stomach. But Uma lay awake, occasionally mumbling or twitching restlessly, though still making no move to get out from under Geralt's grip.

He was reminded of lying like this with Ciri--and a dryad, but the principle was the same--on the very first night they met, before he even knew her name. Before she was his, when she was just a lost child he couldn't leave to get killed in Brokilon.  
He remembered what she had asked--demanded--of him, that Uma couldn't, and probably wouldn't know to even if he could.

Geralt cleared his throat, and began. "In a certain forest, there was a fox."

Uma made an interested noise and settled more heavily against Geralt's side. Geralt carried on telling the story about the fox and the cat and how they each got into and out of trouble, even after he felt Uma go limp with sleep.

* * *

Geralt turned away hastily, as eager as anyone to give Avallac'h a moment to recover from the ordeal of having his curse broken. More eager, perhaps. Vesemir, who had genially treated Uma as a tagalong boy while the rest of them prepared the spell, didn't show any sign of embarrassment now that he knew the real identity of his little companion.

Geralt... Geralt just needed a minute to catch his breath.

He got nearly an hour, sitting on the battlements with his feet dangling in the air, breathing deep in the crisp mountain cold, before Avallac'h sat down beside him, quite gracefully and with no sign that it had ever crossed his mind that he might not be welcome.

Well, Geralt wasn't going to be the one to speak first. 

"It isn't as if everyone was cruel to me, in my cursed form," Avallac'h said calmly after a few moments. "But even those who were indifferent, or saw some use for me, were careless of me. They thought me an animal at best, and more often an object."

Avallac'h stopped there, and Geralt stared out at the horizon and said, "Yeah. People do that."

After another little silence, Avallac'h said, "It occurs to me now that all I know of Zireael ought to have led me to expect more than I did of the man who had so great a part in raising her."

Geralt shrugged. What Avallac'h expected wasn't particularly Geralt's problem.

"I realize you did not do it for the sake of my gratitude," Avallac'h said. "But you have it in any case."

He clapped Geralt's shoulder, almost companionably, and then stood up and walked away. When he was nearly out of sight, Geralt said, "You too."

Avallac'h stopped where he stood, but didn't turn back to look. 

"It was good not to be alone," Geralt said simply, like that was enough to sum up the feeling of being trusted, being able to protect someone and give comfort.

Avallac'h nodded once, and then resumed walking. Geralt stayed where he was, staring out at the horizon, knowing that everyone he counted as family was here in the keep with him, making ready to bring Ciri home.


End file.
